Video: Enlightened's Season 2 Trailer Has Arrived

It may not get quite as much buzz as fellow HBO comedies Girls and Veep, but I’m equally (maybe even slightly more) excited for the Jan. 13 return of Enlightened, Laura Dern and Mike White’s look at one slightly unhinged woman’s fight against The Man.

HBO recently released the Golden Globe-nominated series’ Season 2 trailer, which is set to the rousing tune of Fun’s “Some Nights,” and features the arrival of an investigative reporter played by Dermot Mulroney.

Well the trailer actually arrived last week. Regardless, this is a natural progression of what the show should be, like it’s found its footing. “People are living under the illusion that the American dream is working for them” is a brilliant line.

Strange, because I just thought today how these two shows are so different (and better) from the current approach of big bombastic fantasy/history shows that the cable networks seems to have nowadays. Girls and Enlightened are shows that actaully happen now, with real people, that talk about living in our (capitalist) world, and they’re both really important shows IMO.

Strange indeed. Both Girls and Enlightened are remarkably different from the cookie-cutter, uninspired and rote offerings abundantly in supply on TV. I think Dern and Ladd are absolutely fantastic in this show; they delivered two of the best performances I’ve seen last year. I’m definitely grateful for a show that attempts to take a stab at the character that Dern plays: the unhinged, middle-aged woman whose nervous breakdown reveals her existential ennui and who attempts to change herself for the better, reinvent herself to give her life some purpose and meaning (yet is completely unable to make that transition into “noble woman” not make her look a little crazy and somewhat pretentious). And how about Diane Ladd… an old woman haunted by old memories, waiting for the time on the clock to run out, supportive of her daughter but not all-out sentimental and emotional? How many other shows are brave enough to have these kinds of people for protagonists? I don’t know how the second season will turn out… it could take a nose-dive into on-the-nose, derivative plots about Amy’s struggles against the evils of corporate capitalism… but it could also be sublime, subtle and moving. Can’t wait!